2010

Why Is WA State U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan Working With CAIR?

By WILLIAM MAYER

March 21, 2012 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Since the DOJ's U.S. Attorneys are the chief federal law enforcement officers in their various districts, we were more than a bit surprised to find that Jenny Durkan, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington State, had developed an ongoing relationship with the tainted Islamist pressure group, the Council on American Islamic Relations [CAIR].

CAIR, for those not thoroughly conversant with the group's history, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest domestic Hamas terror funding prosecution in U.S. history [U.S. vs. Holy Land Foundation]. The conclusion of the trial found all defendants [including a prominent member of the Texas chapter of CAIR, Ghassan Elashi] convicted on a combined total of over 100 charges.1

At the time of his conviction Mr. Elashi was already serving a lengthy sentence due to his conviction on another terror related matter [see, U.S. vs. Infocom, superseding indictment located at, http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/infocom/uselashi121702sind.pdf]]

CAIR has been named in federal court documents as being closely aligned with Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group created by the Muslim Brotherhood, "The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, with NAIT, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas," U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis said in the July 1, 2009, ruling" [source, The Investigative Project: Federal Judge Agrees: CAIR Tied to Hamas.

Based upon the treasure trove of information regarding the Muslim Brotherhood and its front-groups' strategy to slowly Islamize North America which was presented into evidence at the Holy Land prosecution, the FBI discontinued its relationship with the now undeniably terror-linked group. In order to emphasize the point the agency's Director, Robert Mueller, declared in a House Judiciary Committee proceeding, "We have no formal relationship with CAIR because of concerns with regards to national leadership..." [source, News 9 Oklahoma City, http://www.news9.com/Global/story.asp?S=14328429]

Similarly, the FBI's 56 field offices were instructed to break whatever relationships they had involving CAIR, "We were instructed, we being the 56 FBI field offices, to sever formal relations with CAIR," said James Finch, FBI Special Agent in Charge for Oklahoma City."

Arsalan Bukhari is the Executive Director of CAIR Washington, which maintains an office in Seattle. [source, CAIR Seattle website, http://www.cairseattle.org/our-staff] and it seems an odd prospect indeed for a U.S. Attorney's office to be participating in an ongoing relationship with him - over and above the obviously heavy baggage accruing to CAIR by way of the Holy Land prosecution - in that as part of his community outreach, he urges Muslims to refuse to work with U.S. law enforcement.

"There's nothing to gain from talking to law enforcement," he continues. "There are too many things happening to Muslims recently. "I can't emphasize enough," he repeats, "you have the right to remain silent, so please practice it." [source, Nina Shapiro, A Mystery of Violence, Seattle Weekly News]

This combative stance is part and parcel of CAIR's campaign to "Build a Wall of Resistance, Don't Talk to the FBI." Thus he [and Washington State CAIR] hardly seem reasonable candidates for civic engagement with top DOJ prosecutors.

Mr. Bukhari's history of incendiary statements includes the preposterous assertion that the Simon Wiesenthal Center has an agenda which is "anti-Muslim."

"They accuse the Wiesenthal Center of spreading fear toward Islam by producing or promoting films about extremism within Islam...'The center has an anti-Muslim agenda, to be frank,' contends Arsalan Bukhari, president of the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations." [source, Seattle Times]

In another instance of CAIR Washington stoking the coals of bigotry and religious hatred, an October 2, 2011 press release by the organization claims, "...the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-WA) will join a coalition of community groups at a news conference in Seattle to express concerns about persistent reports that FBI agents are trained to view mainstream American Muslims with suspicion and to view the faith of Islam itself as the source of terrorism and extremism..." [source, CAIR: Seattle FBI Class Handout Linked Arabs, Islam to Nazism, PR Newswire].

The presser offers, as proof of the above allegation that Seattle area law enforcement training material slanders American Muslims, the statement, "A careful comparison of Arab/Islamist propaganda and Nazi propaganda reveals the closeness of these links... I would suggest that the current conflicts are a continuation of Nazi policies carried out by Arabs..."

Nowhere in this language is the American Muslim community, as an entity, mentioned at all, nor is it singled out. The point which it [correctly] makes is the affinity between Arab based Nazi propaganda and the anti-Semitism inherent in Islamism.

For those in doubt of this assertion please refer to Jeffry Herf's Nazi Propaganda For The Arab World2 which clearly demonstrates the close working relationship before and during World War II between the Third Reich and Arab Islamists.

"...During World War II, the Nazi regime distributed, in Arabic, millions of printed leaflets and broadcast thousands of hours of shortwave radio programs to diffuse its ideology throughout North Africa and the Middle East..." [Herf, preface]

"Herf explores the intellectual, political, and cultural context in which German and European radical anti-Semitism was found to resonate with similar views rooted in a selective appropriation of the traditions of Islam...Pro-Nazi Arab exiles in wartime Berlin, including Haj el-Husseini"...[the war criminal, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem 3]...and Rashid el-Kalani, collaborated with the Nazis in constructing their Middle East propaganda campaign.." [Herf, frontispiece]

It appears then that what CAIR Washington and its leader Mr. Bukhari really desires is not historical accuracy but the censorship of truths which it finds inconvenient.

How a partnership between the U.S. Attorney's office and any local chapter office of CAIR can bear anything but bitter fruit remains to be seen. We submit that the development and maintenance of such relationships constitutes serious grounds for reviewing Ms. Durkan's fitness to hold such a high level DOJ position. For the record, Ms. Jenny Durkin is a 2009 Barack Obama appointee 4.

Let's turn back the clock nearly 20 years to the weekend of October 2-3, 1993. Senior American Hamas activists are meeting in a Philadelphia hotel to plan strategy for the group, one of their goals...derailing the Oslo "peace process." Unfortunately for them, the proceedings of the meeting were being wiretapped by the FBI. Future leaders of the organization which came to be known as CAIR were in attendance at the meeting.

As part of its initial funding CAIR received a $5,000 wire transfer from the Hamas entity the Holy Land Foundation, to help establish CAIR's Washington, DC office.

Those present at this meeting were identified - as shown below [excerpted from a document archived by the Investigative Project on Terrorism] by the FBI in the following manner:

"...The 25 person gathering represented, according to the FBI, 'a meeting...among senior leaders of HAMAS, the LLFRD and the IAP.' A FBI analysis further noted: 'all attendees of this meeting are Hamas members' or sympathizers...'" [source, CAIR's Origin, IPT referring to HLF document, "FBI Analysis of the Philadelphia Conference, Submitted as an exhibit in Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development v. Ashcroft, 02-442 GK, Exhibit 28 at 1400 (D.D.C)."]

So we must conclude from this evidence that two of the founders of CAIR, Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad [still CAIR's Executive Director, source CAIR website, http://www.cair.com/aboutus/cairnationalboardandstaff.aspx#Nihad_Awad] attended a domestic meeting wherein Hamas planned its long-term strategy. One of the decisions made at the conference was that a new organization needed to be created which could better interface with American society "whose Islamic hue is not very conspicuous," in their words, absent the obvious radical baggage attendant Hamas. [source, characterization of the new organization, http://counterterrorismblog.org/upload/2007/12/93Phillyfinal%5B1%5D.pdf]

Fast forward to November 2008 when it was announced that all 5 of the Holy Land defendants - Shukri Abu Baker, Mohammad El-Mezain, Mufid Abdulqader, Abdulrahman Odeh and Ghassan Elashi - had been convicted on all counts.

Of note, Shukri Abu Baker, Mohammad El-Mezain, Ghassan Elashi and Mufid Abdulqader were all in attendance at the 1993 Philadelphia meeting, along with two of the founding members of CAIR. Additionally, HLF defendant, Ghassan Elashi, already serving a long sentence in the Hamas-linked Infocom terror prosecution, was a member of the founding board of the Texas chapter of CAIR..."

2. Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda For The Arab World, Yale Press, 2009

3. Husseini met personally with Adolph Hitler, coordinated attacks against Jewish settlers in "Palestine" and recruited Muslims to join the Reich's SS. He was particularly effective in building a Waffen SS Muslim army in Bosnia called the Hanjar [Sword] Division which carried out a genocidal campaign [replete with horrific atrocities] against Serbian Jews, killing as many as 90% of them.

4. In order to establish Ms. Durkan's perspective on this matter, PipeLineNews.org did query her press aide, who declined to comment, instead referring us to the DOJ's Washington, DC Office of Public Affairs, which offered the following, wholly non-responsive one-line statement, "The department takes civil rights complaints seriously, and will often receive information from a number of different organizations, including CAIR."